Video: Correcting exposure

Let's now take a look at how we could use the Adjustment Brush in order to fix some exposure issues. In particular with this photograph, it's backlit, so the subject is a bit underexposed, the background is a bit overexposed, and I also want to just paint in a few adjustments into a few areas of the photograph. Well, in order to work with the Adjustment Brush, we can first press the K key in order to select it. The next thing that I want to do is I want to turn on my Highlight Clipping Indicator.

This course provides in-depth training on Camera Raw 7, the Photoshop CS6 component that enables photographers to open and manipulate raw format images. Raw images are minimally processed in the camera; they're effectively the exact data recorded by the camera's sensor. Author Chris Orwig shows you how to control a raw image's appearance—exposure, shadow and highlight detail, color balance, and sharpness—with far more precision than is possible with JPEG images. The course also introduces the new workflow procedures and technical concepts and issues associated with raw content, so that photographers can best leverage this powerful format.

Correcting exposure

Let's now take a look at how we could use the Adjustment Brushin order to fix some exposure issues.In particular with this photograph, it's backlit,so the subject is a bit underexposed, the background is a bit overexposed,and I also want to just paint in a few adjustments into a few areas of the photograph.Well, in order to work with the Adjustment Brush,we can first press the K key in order to select it.The next thing that I want to do is I want to turn on my Highlight Clipping Indicator.

To do that, you can press the O key or you can click on this Triangle icon here.This is then showing me that I have clipping, or loss of detail, in this area of the photograph.These highlights are overexposed.To fix that, we can click on the Minus sign for Highlights and let's click on that a couple of times and then we'll scroll down to our Brush options.For the Brush, I'll make the brush a little bit bigger.The Flow, we'll bring this up just a bit.We want a nice high Feather amount.Next, with this decreased Highlight amount,we can go ahead and start to paint across the image.

It looks like my brush is a little bit too big there, so I'm going to decrease that, and then I'll just start to paint over this area.And with this Clipping Indicator turned on, the red,you can see I'm now painting away that problem area.And in doing this we're fixing this part of the image,and this Clipping Indicator is really helpful, because it's showing me exactly where I need to use this adjustment.Alright, well now that we've done that, look at our before and after.Here's before and here's after.Really quickly and easily we fixed that highlight issue.

Well, now that we've done that,let's go ahead and turn off that Clipping Indicator and analyze the image.What else do we need to do?Well, the subject is a little bit too dark.I also might want to change the color temperature here a bit on the subject.So we need to make a new adjustment.To do that, press the N key to create a new adjustment or click on the New button.That will then deactivate our previous adjustment so that we can dial in new settings.And here let's click on Exposure.We'll go ahead and just click on that a few times.Next, we'll scroll down to our Brush optionsand I'm just going to decrease my Flow here a little bit.

And then I'll go ahead and start painting across the image.Now, as I'm painting what I'm looking to do is to just brighten up this areaof the photograph, also a little bit of the hair there.And then I want to brighten up the jacket as well,so you can see I'm just painting back and forth.The more you paint in one area,the more you can bring in this particular effect into that part of the image.That's because we have this lower Flow amount.Well, now here if we click on our Preview button, you can see there's before and there's after.That's already looking much nicer.

Well, I also mentioned I wanted to change the color temperature.To do that, we can scroll back to the top, go to our Temperature slider andhere I'm just going to click and drag to the right, because I want to warm that area up.I'm going to go ahead and warm this up a little bit too much.I'm going to do that because I'm going to now add some Clarity.Remember that Clarity desaturates our pictures?So by having this a little bit warmer, this now Clarity amount or this nicemidtone Contrast, it didn't remove too much of the color.

I'll also increase my Saturation there a little bit.I just want to do this so that I have some nice colors in the face and also on the garments.Okay, well, that looks really good, except I'm noticing the jacket, it's a little bit too blue.Once again, click on the New button.Now, here what I'll do is click on the Negative sign for the Temperature slider.Notice that basically there's a rhythm that I'm trying to show you here.You create a new Brush, you dial in your controls, your Brush settings,and then you paint away.

In this case I'll just paint over this area of the picture.It looks like I need to use a little bit of a higher Flow amount, I'll go ahead andjust paint over this part of the picture right here, and then scroll back up to the top.And in this case, you can see that what's happened is this is becoming more blue.Rather than blue, I actually want this to be neutral, so I'm going to drag thisto the right to add in some yellow, which in turn removed some of thatcolor temperature there, so now it's a nice black rather than a little bit of a blue.

Okay, well, we have all these different pins, we can click on those,and as we do that we also will see this mask overlay.Well, what's that about?You can see it kind of turns blue in the area that I've adjusted.Well, if you scroll down to the bottom,you have this ability to turn on the mask permanently.You can do so by clicking on this checkbox here.You can also click on your Color Chip and you can change the color that you want to display this masked area, because certain images, different colors will help you see that perhaps more clearly.

You may want to do this so that it can show you what area you've affected,like with this adjustment I've affected too much of the photograph.Well, now, to change that I can go to my Erase option here,and then I'll just click and paint this away from this part of the jacket.In doing this it then won't affect that part of the image.So sometimes what you'll do is you'll turn on the Show Mask here to help yousee what part of your image you've worked on, or with this option off,you can just hover over that and get that view really quickly there.

Another way that you might want to work with these pins is you might want toclick on one of the pins and then go back and make other adjustments.Let's say that was too bright or not bright enough,you could then dial that in with these controls.And then finally, last but not least, the last thing you might want to dowith these pins is you may want to hide those.Do you remember the shortcut key for that? It's the V key.Think of the visibility, V for visibility of those items.You can also turn those on and off by clicking on this icon here.

What I like to do is I like to turn off the visibility of those.And before I leave this tool, I want to see my preview of what I've done,the before and after.So here's our before and then here's our after.The image is looking much nicer.And then to simply apply these settings or to move on to making other adjustments,all that you need to do is to select another tool.Here I'll go ahead and click on the Zoom Tool.That will then take us out of the Adjustment Brushso that we could make other adjustments to the overall image.

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